We’ll have a “special report” on prophecy soon, but for now let’s follow up on this notion, sparked by new revelations out of Fatima, that an event could have occurred (but for the intervention of Mary) or may well loom in the future that has to do with the earth’s axis.

For in a 1944 “enlightenment” seer Lucia dos Santos told colleagues an infusion came to her as she prayed about the third secret that was given to her nearly three decades before. Besides indicating an angel with a flaming sword, set to cause the world on “fire,” it also appeared, in her words, as if “the tip of the spear as a flame unlatches and touches the axis of the earth.”

This, it went on — the enlightenment, apparently from the Blessed Mother — would cause the planet to “shudder” and “mountains, cities, towns, and villages with their inhabitants” to be “buried.” The seas would “overflow.” So would rivers. There would be a “whirlwind” of houses and people” beyond count.

It has been a remarkable addition to the entire Fatima episode. And it leads to many questions. A key one:

What going on with or happening to the earth’s axis might cause this? What could lead to such calamitous effects?

We have previously mentioned that it would take a massive comet or asteroid to affect the earth’s axis and rotation. One of girth enough to jolt the axis would in fact sterilize the earth of all life; while it fits the part of the secret mentioning fire, it would go beyond a chastisement.

But it is a chastisement that is implied by the Fatima and other secrets — not the end of the world.

If it wasn’t for mention of the axis — which would take such a colossal bolide — one could more readily envision a smaller, fiery comet hitting an ocean and causing massive “overflowing” waves. Or an asteroid (though this would not be as blazing). An all-out nuclear war (and war is also mentioned in the enlightenment) could cause such localized effects (disruptions in nearby bodies of water), and there would be fire for sure.

But no nuclear weaponry could affect the earth’s axis; even the great Asian tsunami of 2004 shifted the axis just several centimeters (and changed the rotation a mere .004 seconds). The Japanese quake-tsunami may have budged the axis four inches. It naturally moves a meter or two in the course of a couple of decades.

If not something like a comet, what then might one look to as profoundly and substantially changing the tilt of earth?

The earth’s axis or tilt is currently about 23.5 degrees. Over long periods of time — thousands of years — it can vary from 22 to roughly 24 degrees.

That angle of tilt, we come to learn, is substantially affected by gravity not only from the sun, but also from other planets in the solar system and even the moon, which holds it in place to an extent and keeps it from varying as much (precessing) as it might otherwise.

But there are other planets in our solar system that have varied much more widely, or rotate far differently, or are tilted far more, suggesting that earth could also. Mars can vary from 0 degrees to sixty over millions of years. Pluto is tilted at 122 degrees. There is at least one planet in our solar system — Uranus — that rotates on its side. Venus spins in reverse. All planets have now reached sort of an equilibrium, where they exert forces that stabilize each other.

This could change if the gravity in the sun — so much larger than all the planet’s combined — or a force from the galactic center were to alter its gravitational pull or if an “exoplanet” — an object from beyond our solar system, or in the farthest and as yet undiscovered reaches of our own system — were to suddenly insert a new influence.

These are possibilities; these are forces that could “touch” the axis of earth.

But as likely as anything and perhaps more so might be perturbations in our planet itself: shifts in the interior structure, namely the molten core of the earth.

Or, in the entire crust: the core maintaining its normal rotation while the layers in the crust suddenly liquefy due to imbalance and magnetic effects, causing the surface to shift, jolt, or glide over underlying layers.

There are those who believe that Antarctica was once at the equator and that massive crustal shifts can happen every 12,000 or even 6,000 years — the latter a figure that would place it in line with the biblical reckoning of when the world, or at least the world as we now know it, was formed.

They relate it to passages in Genesis and Isaiah (see the passage at the end of this article). Or even Noah.

Is it changing? Is the crust or molten iron on the move?

If so, many believe it could not only affect the earth’s axis (the geographical poles, causing the planet to actually tilt one way or another more), but, depending on the extent, also cause tremendous seaquakes (leading to tsunamis), volcanic disruptions (“fire”), profound and even radical changes in climate and weather patterns, or even reform coastlines and continents.

This is not to be confused with the “magnetic poles,” which have been migrating as much as a thousand or more miles from the geographic poles and often do, as much as thirty miles a year.

If the physical, geographic poles suddenly changed, it would be an entirely different — and potentially cataclysmic — event.

Some believe that movements in the molten iron or other parts of the earth’s interior would cause loud explosions, and in fact the past several years have witnessed numerous places around the world where loud, unexplained, and perhaps subterranean “booms” and “rumblings” have been reported — often in secular news outlets. This year they have come from such disparate places as Idaho, South Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, South Dakota, and New Jersey [see here].

In the Canadian Arctic, Eskimos say they have observed very noticeable differences in where the stars are now placed and where the sun rises, believing this is what has caused a shift in climate (as permafrost melts around them). Inuit elders have even sent NASA a letter about it (back on April 20, 2011), stating that days are heating up faster and lasting longer. Long accustomed to studying the moon and stars for survival, they say they can no longer predict the weather.

Is something already underway?

Does it factor into unusual northern lights of late, since the turn of the millennium?

We’ll report.

You can discern.

[“The sea, the rivers, and the clouds emerge from their limits, overflowing and bringing with them in a whirlwind houses and people in numbers that are not possible to count,” said Sister Lucia, “It is the purification of the world as it plunges into sin. Hatred and ambition cause the destructive war!”]

[Quotes from Isaiah 24: V 1 Behold, the LORD makes the earth empty, and makes it waste, and turns it upside down, and scatters abroad the inhabitants thereof.

V 18 And it shall come to pass, [that] he who flees from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.]